


Now & Later

by sevdepayne



Series: He's a Keeper [1]
Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Girlfriends/No Wives, Coffee Shops, Flirting, Goalies, M/M, excessive amount of caffeine, mentions of Kepa as the new Chelsea manager, mentions of breaking up, sarri incident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 00:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19757173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevdepayne/pseuds/sevdepayne
Summary: A few days after the European Cup final, the goalkeepers of Chelsea and Arsenal run into each other in a small coffee shop somewhere in London, which causes Bernd Leno to reconsider his New Year's Resolutions.





	Now & Later

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for my great beta [ Meggie ](https://manuelmueller.tumblr.com/) for fixing the mess I've made in the beginning. 
> 
> Enjoy!

To be completely honest, Bernd is done with trying to force any kind of romantic relations with his direct competitors. After years of struggling to make a relationship work even though it has been doomed to fail since the beginning, at some point in the past year, the realization hit him, that he has become too old to hold onto a relationship that does not bring him any joy other than incredible sex and rarely-occurring emotional support. 

It is even in his 2019 resolutions list, in bold letters and almost thirty exclamation marks next to it. 

**_!!!!!!!!Stop screwing goalkeepers, you’re too old for this.!!!!!!!!!_ **

And he is doing better than he thought he would, the fact that he definitely is not on speaking terms with that asshole in Barcelona since last summer’s training camp has been helping him a lot in realizing his resolutions and Bernd is not complaining about this at all. He is aware that in order to burn every single bridge that they have built over the course of several years, they need to be far away from each other, detoxify themselves from the toxic but addictive relationship they have hold onto for years, to heal and move on with their lives.

Of course, all the progress he has made in this regard goes down the drain on a rainy day in London, while waiting to order his coffee and croissants in an unusually quiet and deserted coffee shop, as clichée as it sounds.

The barista welcomes him with a warm but generic “Good morning, how can I help you?”, making Bernd think that she does not follow football or Arsenal at all, which is an extra relief for him considering that he is not in the mood to deal with fans in the morning. He orders a large cold brew, two croissants and some butter and strawberry jam to savor, with a clear consciousness knowing that his summer break has begun already. 

While waiting for his order to be prepared, Bernd checks his emails and social media notifications, nothing interesting enough to catch his attention apart from Brandt’s text informing him that he’ll be transferring to Dortmund in the following days. Bernd knew about this already, and he would be a bit resentful towards his friend if he were still playing for Leverkusen, but now that he has been the first person to leave the ship, the goalie is aware that it makes him the last person to be able to say anything to Julian other than a heartfelt “good luck bro, you got this!”

He takes the tray with his food and coffee when it’s ready, without bothering to look around his surroundings, and keeps not making eye contact with anyone or anything until he finds a corner table for himself in the garden of the coffee shop, protected from the rain thanks to the tent placed above. It is when he sits down and makes himself comfortable that he takes notice of the guy standing on the other side of the table – probably the last person he would expect to come across in this part of London. 

Kepa Arrizabalaga Revuelta. Goalkeeper of Chelsea, also known as the team that robbed Bernd the first chance he got to win a European cup in his life. Not that it would be a victory Bernd contributed to actively, but still, a gold medal is always better than a meaningless, pathetic silver one.

“Are you always this uninterested in your surroundings, or is it just me that you are ignoring deliberately?” the younger goalkeeper asks with a grin on his face and a child-like joy in his voice. “I have been trying to catch your attention since we were in line but apparently, it’s an impossible task to make you look up from your phone.” 

The Spaniard makes himself comfortable on the other chair without waiting for an invitation, putting his own tray down while Bernd mumbles a barely audible “Sorry, no. I didn’t see you there.”

Only after he makes himself extremely comfortable in his chair Kepa asks, “You weren’t waiting for someone else, right? Is it okay if I join you?”, as if someone just whispered in his ear to remind him of proper manners, a bit panicked but not actually bothered.

“No, no. Not at all, it’d be my pleasure. How have you been?”

The younger goalkeeper shrugs in response while occupying himself with the task of spreading Nutella and honey all over his muffins, an unnecessarily sugary combo for Bernd’s liking, even though they’re off duty. 

“To be honest, still kinda hangover,” Kepa answers after he swallows his first bite. “Don’t think that I’m bragging, but man… I’m not gonna drink ever, ever again.”

Bernd lets out a chuckle at the determination in the Chelsea keeper’s voice. Not that he really knows the guy, on the contrary, they only interacted with each other a couple of times for the past year and nothing more, but for some reason, he has a feeling that the Spaniard’s self-promise is not going to last long. 

“Oh, so you don’t believe me. I’m truly offended,” Kepa says, accompanied with an exaggerated expression on his face which makes him look younger than he already is. “Anyways, how are you? Still bitter about the loss?”

In a normal day, if a person who is responsible for the defeat Bernd and his team has suffered in the near past had asked the same question, the German keeper would be extremely pissed and ready to punch the guy. But for some reason, the tone of Kepa’s voice, the genuine curiosity in his eyes, his overall posture and all makes him set aside the temptation to give a sarcastic answer. Really. He doesn’t even consider rolling his eyes and putting Kepa’s name in the “people I will hate forever” list he keeps in the back of his mind.

“Nah, not really. There was nothing I could do anyway,” says Bernd, an almost-believable nonchalance in his words. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but in our profession, you can’t do shit if you are the back-up keeper.”

Kepa shrugs again and makes himself busy with buttering the second muffin on his plate, and Bernd starts to have a feeling that the younger one does this to buy himself time to consider what is he going to say next. He gets the impression that the Spainard calculates every word he’s going to say, every sentence he’s going to form, as if they’re playing a chess game that Bernd realizes that they’re playing only now. 

“I don’t know if  _ you  _ are aware of this, but you,” points his knife stained with a mixture of butter, honey and Nutella to Bernd, “being the back-up keeper in that game was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in football.”

“Well, it happens,” Bernd says, trying to keep his face as neutral as possible.

This time the younger keeper plays with his coffee, stirs it, spoons a bit of it and pours it back into his cup. And this time, Bernd starts to think that Kepa is incapable of sitting too still and if he has to sit for a while, he has to do something with his hands to keep himself busy. 

“Still, you should’ve done something about it,” says Kepa, while tearing a used napkin into little pieces. “If you were playing, I would have enjoyed the game way more.”

Bernd is surprised with the young keeper’s candor, he truly is, but he is more surprised with the wink followed after his last sentence. Not that it’s a thing that should mean something specific, yet it still reminds him that first steps Marc took towards him after years of grudges and fights, the first sincere conversation they had, the first date they went to, the first time they held hands, the first time they kissed…

He realizes that he’s gotten lost in his thoughts when Kepa has to snap his fingers to catch his attention. “What are you thinking about?” asks the Spaniard softly, like he’s trying to approach a baby gazelle without terrifying the poor animal. It should make Bernd feel uncomfortable, being treated with the utmost care like that, all fragile and ready to collapse. Yet on the contrary, it fills an emptiness in his stomach that he was not aware of its existence, like someone is feeding him some warm milk with honey on a cold day. 

“I was just wondering if I can pull a Kepa, you know?” answers the German keeper with the utmost seriousness in his voice, an attempt to create a comic relief in order to shoo the dangerous thoughts he’s starting to have, slowly but steadily. 

It is Kepa’s turn to be confused, and Bernd notices that being confused makes him look even younger than he already is, as if he is a toddler woken up from his nap just now and has only a vague idea about his surroundings.

“What does ‘pulling a Kepa’ mean anyway?”

“Refusing to get off the pitch when your manager tries to withdraw you in a final, of course,” 

Kepa gasps in fake-shock at Bernd’s explanation, squinting his eyes. “Asshole,” quietly says the Spaniard later, careful to emphasize each letter separately. “It wasn’t like that.”

The German keeper grins at the denial in Kepa’s words, not believing him even for a second. “Sure, and the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” he says, still preserving the seriousness from earlier. As a natural result, he gets a paper straw thrown at him, hitting him right in his nose. A proper punishment for his crime, really.

Bernd barely hears Kepa saying “Why does no one believe me when I say that it was because of the miscommunication, and not an open rebellion,”, he is too busy with bursting into a laughing fit, making the other customers of the coffee shop quite annoyed in the process.

\---

When Kepa’s phone starts ringing and he gets up to take the call, Bernd realizes that they have been enjoying each other’s company for more than four hours already. He is not aware of how the time has passed so quickly, but the four extra empty cups and a half-eaten brownie they shared are enough evidence of the time they spent together. 

Not that he’s complaining, really, because the hours they spent while sitting in that corner table, doing nothing other than casually chatting are probably the highlight of his week.

Kepa comes back after two minutes or so, sits down to his place in the chair next to Bernd’s with a dramatic sigh and sprawls his legs to the empty space between him and the German keeper. 

(Also, Bernd has no idea at which point Kepa moved to the chair next to him, but in his opinion, them sitting side by side yet still facing each other is better than sitting with a table in between anyway.)

“We have a new manager,” says Kepa, letting Bernd know about the context of his phone call.

“Did they call to ask for your approval? Or did they finally appoint you as the official manager of Chelsea and you no longer have to pretend that someone else has the authority?”

This time it isn’t a straw that hits him in the face, but one of the decorative flowers the Spaniard took from the vase on their table. 

“Not funny,” Kepa says while attacking Bernd with the flowers, napkins, sugar packages, basically whatever he can find in his near proximity. Despite his denial, the younger goalie is laughing contagiously, which makes Bernd think that Kepa does not take offence from any of his snide comments regarding the “Sarri Incident”.

When they run out of stuff to throw at each other, Kepa announces that he should be leaving due to a meeting he’s going to have with some of his teammates, insisting that Bernd should stay and finish the brownie and his last cup of coffee. 

“Next time I’ll see you, we will be on the opposite sides of the pitch, then,” says Bernd, standing up like a gentlemen but hands are in his pocket, uncertain of what should he do with them. For some reason, shaking hands when they are saying their goodbyes does not feel like the right thing to do, yet he also has no idea what they should do instead.

Thankfully, Kepa is more straight-forward than he is, so the Spaniard closes the tiny gap they have between themselves and hugs him, brief but strong, a kind of hug that makes Bernd wanting more. 

They separate after five seconds, but Kepa is still standing extremely close to him, biting his lip and gazing at Bernd while doing so. “We don’t have to be on opposite sides, or on a pitch, though,” says the Spaniard quietly. “We don’t even have to wait for the season to start.”

It leaves Bernd speechless, and apparently Kepa is not waiting for an answer because he turns his back and starts walking towards the exit without giving Bernd a chance to say something else. He does not forget to wink at Bernd over his shoulder though, and the older goalie can only smile at his younger colleague, dimples and all. 

The first thing that comes to Bernd’s mind after Kepa leaves his sight is to edit his new year’s resolutions list.

**_!!!!!!!!Stop screwing_ ** **GERMAN** **_goalkeepers, you’re too old for this.!!!!!!!!!_ **

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/comments are always appreciated, thank you for readin! | [tumblr](https://berndlenhoe.tumblr.com/)


End file.
